What good is a dead body…
Beena Sarwar’s article “What good is a dead body” (July 4) truly depicted my frustration on failure of my efforts in moving about in the Indo-Pak subcontinent, which I still consider my motherland. It was only I.K. Gujral, a sharnarthi from Jehlum, who could understand the longing of the divided families to see their birthplace and meet their relatives and friends on the other side of the divide. The establishment of the different states in the subcontinent did in no way mean to raise the perfidious barriers against movement of the people. No one could visualise the creation of such closed-door states as a result of partition. In fact, the people were given to believe that at least the two states, India and Pakistan, would be like Canada and America, with free inter-state movement of the citizens of the two countries. They even talked of a corridor for communication between the erstwhile East and West Pakistan, now Pakistan and Bangladesh.
My generation, which is soon going to be extinct, is witness to all this history. Most of them will die, taking with them their longing to see the other side of the divide, which they once considered their ‘Janam-bhoomi’, their motherland.
Talawat Bokhari
Islamabad
